getting my ya-yas out

2:12 AM and Amy is hungry

Rather than look at food reviews for Hilo restaurants and silently cry, I will be productive about the lack of good food available in Spokane! I will make it!

Shopping list of my dreams:

-Sesame oil. Bottles and bottles of it. This is a kitchen staple.

-Hot chili oil. Another staple. As is oyster sauce.

-Shoyu goes without saying. Aloha Shoyu is the best. Find it.

-UME! There is nothing better than a friendly, pinkish red ‘hello’ once you get to the middle of your rice ball. Ume salad dressing is to-die-for, and I can possibly make it myself.

-Baby bok choy. It seems like it is easier to get regular bok choy here, but I much prefer the baby variety because of its tenderness. I could buy a ton of them, chop ’em up and freeze it.

-Ginger. I have a love-hate relationship with ginger. The Mae Ploy pre-shredded bottles are so handy, but they get moldy pretty quickly. I made a ginger dish recently and bought fresh ginger, which was such a hassle to peel and shred. But it adds such depth of flavor to…everything. Even tuna! The powdered variety is good, but it cannot replace the real thing in stirfrys.

-Plum sauce for dipping. I don’t really like to heat it up, but mixing it with a little shoyu is great on the side.

-TOFU. I cannot live without tofu. I can’t remember when I tried it for the first time. I think I ate the silken kind when I was a baby. I love tofu, beyond belief. I will eat it raw, cold, warm, chewy, crunchy…I would buy ten at a time if they didn’t go bad. Even though I’ll still eat it when it gets sour.

-With tofu hand-in-hand is rice! I try my hardest not to eat white rice, but there’s really no replacing it in certain dishes. Brown rice can be good for fried rice, but I feel like it doesn’t completely absorb the flavors that white rice can. I used to make lots of soybean, red bell pepper fried brown rice dishes when I was a heavy dieter. I didn’t put oil in the pan, and I added shoyu and garlic chunks. Ono.

-Sugar is a kitchen necessity for most people, but I add a little to my Asian sauces as per Sam Choy’s advice.

-Rice wine vinegar too.

-GOOD VEGETABLE BOUILLON. We always have bouillon cubes at my family’s house. They are so, so useful for sauce and soup starters. You can even use it as a base for a marinade.

-Fresh tomatoes. There is so, so much you can do with them. The problem with buying them in college is that they ALWAYS go bad on me. I suppose I just need to buy them and seriously plan some tomato-y meals.

-Unshredded cheese. It tastes way better, folks. I like havarti the best, but jack, cheddar and motz are the utilitarian choices. Parmesan too.

-I forgot GREEN ONIONS. And regular onions of course. But green too!

-Red wine vinegar. Excellent stuff. So is basalmic.

-Basic bread ingredients. Flour, yeast, b. soda, b. salt. Vanilla too, even though it rarely has to do with bread.